Definitions Flashcards
Differences in personality from one person to another
Individual Differences
Psychological processes that take place within the person
Intrapersonal Functioning
The quality of requiring few assumptions; simplicity
Parsimony
A dynamic organization, inside the person, of psychophysical systems that create the person’s characteristic patterns of behavior, thoughts, and feelings
Personality
A summary statement, a principle or set of principles about a class of events
Theory
An in depth study of one individual
Case Study
A relationship such that variation in one dimension produces variation in another
Causality (Causal relationship)
An association large enough to have some practical importance
Clinically Significant
A relationship in which two variables or dimensions covary when measured repeatedly
Correlation
A numeric index of the degree of correlation between two variables
Correlation Coeffecient
The variable measured as the outcome of an experiment; the effect in a cause - effect relationship
Dependent Variable
Statistics used to describe or characterize some group
Descriptive Statistics
A method in which people report repeatedly on their current experiences
Experience Sampling
The holding constant of variables that are not being manipulated
Experimental Control
The method in which one variable is manipulated to test for causal influence on another variable
Experimental Method
A study involving a personality factor and an experimental factor
Experimental Personality Research
The degree to which a conclusion applies to many people
Generality (Generalizability)
Relating to an approach that focuses on a particular person across situations
Idiographic
The variable manipulated in an experiment and tested as the cause in a cause - effect relationship
Independent Variable
Statistics used to judge whether a relationship exists between variables
Inferential Statistics
A finding in which the effect of one predictor variable differs depending on the level of another predictor variable
Interaction
A finding in which the effect of one predictor variable is independent of other variables
Main Effect
A study with two (or more) predictor variables
Multifactor Study
The study of the whole person, as opposed to the study of only one aspect of the person
Personology
An association large enough to have practical importance
Practical Significance
The likelihood of an obtained effect occurring when there is no true effect
Statistical Significace
The possibility that an unmeasured variable caused variations in both of two correlated variables
Third Variable Problem
A dimension along which two or more variations exist
Variable
The response set of tending to say “yes” (“agree”) in response to any question
Acquiesence
The measuring of personality
Assessment
The accuracy with which a measure reflects the underlying concept
Construct Validity
The degree to which a measure relates to other characteristics that are conceptually similar to what it’s supposed to assess
Convergent Validity
The developing of a test by seeing which items distinguish between groups
Criterion Keying
The degree to which the measure correlates with a separate criterion reflecting the same concept
Criterion Validity
The degree to which a scale does not measure unintended qualities
Discriminant Validity
The use of data instead of theory to decide what should go into the measure
Empirical Approach (to scale development)
Random influences that are incorporated in measurements
Error
The scale “looks” as if it measures what it’s supposed to measure
Face Validity
Measuring associations between the sense of self and aspects of personality that are implicit (hard to introspect about)
Implicit Assessment
Agreement among responses made to the items of a measure
Internal Reliability (Internal Consistency
The degree of agreement between observers of the same events
Inter - Rater Reliability
A personality test measuring several aspects of personality on distinct subscales
Inventory
A measure that incorporates no interpretation
Objective Measure
An assessment in which someone else produces information about the person being assessed
Observer Ratings
The defining of a concept by the concrete events through which its measured (or manipulated)
Operational Definition
The degree to which the measure predicts other variables it should predict
Predictive Validity
The use of a theory to decide what you want to measure and then deciding how to measure it
Rational Approach (to scale development)
Consistency across repeated measures
Reliability
A biased orientation to answering
Response Set
An assessment in which people make ratings pertaining to themselves
Self Report
The response set of tending to portray oneself favorably
Social Desirability
Assessing internal consistency among responses to items of a measure by splitting the items into halves and then correlating them
Split Half Reliability
A measure incorporating personal interpretation
Subjective Measure
The stability of measurements across time
Test - Retest Reliability
See rational approach
Theoretical Approach
The degree to which a measure actually measures what it’s intended to measure
Validity
The pattern of situation - behavior links the person has established over experiences in some specific domain
Behavioral Signatures
A theory holding that a vulnerability plus stress creates problems in behavior
Diathesis - Stress Model
A person who’s outgoing and prefers social and exciting activities
Extravert
A dimension that underlies a set of interrelated measures, such as items on a self - report inventory
Factor
A statistical procedure used to find basic dimensions underlying a set of measures
Factor Analysis
A correlation between a single measure and the factor in which its being related
Factor Loading
Pertaining to an approach that focuses on an individual person’s uniqueness
Idiographic
The idea that situations and personality interact to determine behavior
Interactionism
Personality patterns deriving from varying levels of dominance and love
Interpersonal Circle
A person who prefers solitary activities
Introvert
An index of the importance of a trait based on the number of words that refer to it
Lexical Criterion
Pertaining to an approach that focused on norms and on variations among persons
Nomothetic
A factor that emerges from a factor analysis performed on a set of previously found factors
Second Order Factor
The idea that situations are the primary determinants of behavior
Situationism
Continuous dimensions of personality on which people vary
Traits
Distinct and discontinuous categories of persons
Types
The projecting of a motive onto an ambiguous external stimulus via imagery
Apperception
The extent to which a task provides information about something
Diagnosticity
A motive assessed indirectly because it’s relatively inaccessible to consciousness
Implicit Motive
The degree to which an action can satisfy a particular need for a person
Incentive
The condition of having more need for power than for affiliation but restraining its use
Inhibited Power Motivation
Cognitive affective clusters organized around readiness for a particular kind of experience
Motive
The dispositional tendency toward a high or low level of some motive
Motive Disposition
An unsatisfactory internal condition that motivates behavior
Need
The need to overcome obstacles and attain goals
Need for Achievement
The need to form and maintain relationships and to be with people
Need for Affiliation
The need for close communication and sharing with someone else
Need for Intimacy
The need to have influence over other people
Need for Power
Study of the entire person
Personology
Any one of a family of tests that uses stories written about pictures to assess motive strength through narrative fantasy
Picture Story Exercise (PSE)
An external stimulus that increases the level of a motive
Press
A motive that’s consciously reported
Self Attributed Motive
A particular method of assessing the strength of a motive through narrative fantasy
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
A study of resemblances between children and their adoptive and biological parents
Adoption Study
Some version of a particular gene
Allele
The temperamental tendency to approach rewards
Approach Temperament
Mating based on the choice of specific characteristics, rather than at random
Assortative Mating
The temperamental tendency to avoid threats
Avoidance Temperament
The study of the inheritance of behavioral qualities
Behavioral Genetics
Testing specific genes because evidence links them to particular biological processes and theory links those processes to personality
Candidate Gene Strategy
Agreement on some characteristic between a twin and a co twin
Concordance
Evolution in which one extreme of a dimension is more adaptive than the other
Directional Selection
Fraternal twins (overlapping genetically 50% on average)
Dizygotic (DZ) Twin
A tendency toward frail thinness
Ectomorphy
The process of putting people randomly into groups of an experiment so their characteristics balance out across groups
Random Assignment
A tendency to be focused, restrained, and planful
Effortful Control
A tendency toward obesity
Endomorphy
An effect that isn’t on DNA but affects DNA functioning and can be inherited
Epigenetic
Activity in which the gene engages in the processes that create a protein
Gene Expression
The idea that people work toward reproducing genes similar to their own
Genetic Similarity Theory
The sequence of the genes contained in the full complement of chromosomes
Genome
Study in which all genes are tested at once
Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS)
See molecular genetics
Genomics
The particular version of a gene that a given person or group has
Genotype
Gene by environment interaction, in which the environment produces different outcomes depending on genetic composition
GxE
An estimate of how much variance of some characteristic is accounted for by inheritance
Heritability
The passing on of genes through the survival of relatives
Inclusive Fitness
A tendency toward muscularity
Mesomorphy
The attachment of methyl chemical groups to a gene or surrounding material
Methylation
The study of how alleles of specific genes relate to other observed differences
Molecular Genetics
Identical twins (overlapping genetically 100%)
Monozygotic (MZ) Twins
An effect of the environment that makes twins differ
Nonshared Environment Effect
The study of how much variance in a characteristic is attributable to genetics versus environment
Quantitative Genetics
The characteristic of having more than one allele for a given gene
Polymorphism
Helping others with the expectation the help will be returned
Reciprocal Altruism
Brothers and sisters
Siblings
The study of the evolutionary basis for social behavior
Sociobiology
Evolution in which intermediate values of a dimension are most adaptive
Stabilizing Selection
Inherited traits that appear early in life
Temperament
A study comparing the similarity between MZ twins against the similarity between DZ twins
Twin Study
Chemicals that mimic the body’s tendency to rebuild muscle tissues
Anabolic Steroids
A person who displays impulsive action which little thought to consequences
Antisocial Personality
The part of the brain that regulates responses to punishment
Avoidance or Withdrawal System
The part of the brain that regulates pursuit of incentives
Behavioral Approach System (BAS)
A neurotransmitter believed to be especially important to approach regulation
Dopamine
A record of overall electrical activity in higher regions of the brain
Electroencephalogram (EEG)
Use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to create a picture of activity inside the brain in different mental states
Functional MRI (fMRI)
A substance, low level of which appear to be linked to anxiety disorders
GABA
A trait involving the capacity to inhibit behavior in the service of social adaptation
Impulsive Unsocialized Sensation Seeking (IUSS)
Things that people desire
Incentives
A picture of activity inside the brain based on the brain’s electromagnetic energy
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
A substance that helps regulate several neurotransmitters and seems to be involved in constraint over impulses
Monamine Oxidase (MAO)
A chemical involved in sending messages along nerve pathways
Neurotransmitter
A neuotransmitter that some researchers believe is important in anxiety responses
Norepinephrine
A hormone that appears to be important in social bonding
Oxytocin
A therapy based on use of medication
Pharmocotherapy
A picture of activity in the brain based on the brain’s metabolism
Position Emission Tomography (PET)
The tendency to seek out varied, unusual and exciting stimuli
Sensation Seeking
A neurotransmitter that some researchers believe is involved in anxiety and others believe is involved in constraint over impulses
Serotonin
A male sex hormone that influences a wide range of behaviors
Testosterone
The second stage of developmental, centered around issues in toilet training
Anal Stage
A feeling warning the ego that something bad is about to happen
Anxiety
Biologically programmed cell death
Apoptosis
A boy’s fear (during the phallic stage) that his father will perceive him as a rival and castrate him
Castration Anxiety
The release of emotional tension
Catharsis
The part of the superego that punishes violations of moral standards
Conscience
The part of the mind that holds what you are currently aware of
Conscious
Preoccupations in your current waking life
Current Concerns
Self destructive instincts, often turned outward as aggression
Death Instincts (Thanatos)
An ego protective strategy to hide threats from yourself and thereby reduce anxiety
Defense Mechanism
A refusal to believe that some real condition exists
Denial
The shifting of an impulse from its original target to a different one
Displacement
The rational part of the personality that deals pragmatically with reality
Ego
The part of the superego that represents perfection and rewards for good behavior
Ego Ideal
The ability of the ego to function despite competing demands of the id, superego, and reality
Ego Strength
A sexually responsive area of the body
Erogenous Zone
See life instincts or sexual instincts
Eros
The condition of being partly stuck in a stage of psychosexual development
Fixation
A therapy procedure of saying without hesitation whatever comes to mind
Free Association
The final stage of development, characterized by mature and mutual sexual involvement with another
Genital Stage
The original, primitive component of personality; the source of all energy
Id
Developing feelings of similarity to and connectedness with another person
Identification
An emotional re-experiencing of earlier conflicts in your life that occurs during therapy
Insight
The process of thinking about something clinically and without emotion
Intellectualization
Absorbing the values of your parents into your superego
Introjection
The period in which the crises of the phallic stage give way to a temporary calm
Latency Period
The underlying sources of symbolic dream images
Latent Content
The collective energy of the life instincts
Libido
Survival and sexual instincts
Life Instincts or Sexual Instincts (Eros)
The images that make up the dream experience as it’s recalled
Manifest Content
The fear of behaving in conflict with the superego’s moral code
Moral Anxiety
The fear that your id impulses will get out of control and get you into trouble
Neurotic Anxiety
The mix of desire for the opposite sex parent and fear of or hatred for the other parent
Oedipus Complex
The first stage of psychosexual development, in which oral needs create a crisis over weaning
Oral Stage
A slip of the tongue, behavior, or memory
Parapraxis
A girl’s envy of males resulting from feelings of having been castrated
Penis Envy
The third stage of development in which a crisis occurs over sexual desire for the opposite sex parent
Phallic Stage
The idea that impulses should be gratified immediately
Pleasure Principle
The region of the mind that corresponds to ordinary memory
Preconscious
The id process that creates an unconscious image of a desired project
Primary Process
Ascribing or threatening urge or quality in yourself to someone else
Projection
An assessment in which you project from the unconscious onto ambiguous stimuli
Projective Techniques
Finding a plausible but incorrect explanation for an unacceptable action or event
Rationalization
The fear caused by real danger in the world
Reality Anxiety
The idea that actions must take into account the constraints of external reality
Reality Principle
The ego’s checking to see whether plans will work before they are put into action
Reality Testing
The process of preventing an idea or impulse from becoming conscious
Repression
An attempt to avoid becoming conscious of threatening material in therapy
Resistance
A projective test that uses inkblots as ambiguous stimuli
Rorschach Inkblot Test
The ego process of rationally seeking an object to satisfy a desire
Secondary Process
Freud’s model of three components of personality
Structural Model
Alteration of an id impulse into a socially acceptable act
Sublimation
The component of personality that seeks moral perfection
Superego
See death instincts
Thanatos
Freud’s model of three regions, or areas, of the mind
Topographical Model
The displacement onto your therapist of feelings that are tied to an object or conflct
Transference
The region of the mind that’s not accessible to consciousness
Unconscious
The creation of an unconscious image of a desired object
Wish Fulfillment
An emotional connection to someone else
Attachment
The need to be effective or successful in dealing with the environment
Competence Motivation
The need to have an impact on the environment
Effectance Motivation
The extent to which a person controls or inhibits impulses
Ego Control
The overall sense of self that emerges from your transactions with social reality
Ego Identity
The quality that becomes part of your personality through successful management of a crisis
Ego Quality (Ego Strength or Virtue)
The ability to flexibly modify your typical level of ego control to adapt to new contexts
Ego Resiliency
The idea (adopted from embryology) that an internal plan for future development is present at the beginning of life
Epigensis
The feeling that you are deficient in some way
Feelings of Inferiority
The idea that developmental processes continue throughout life
Life Span Development
The giving of positive attention and supportiveness to someone
Mirroring
A sense of grandiose self importance and entitlement
Narcissism
A story you compose for yourself about life to create a coherent sense of identity
Narrative
An individual’s symbolized relations to other persons (such as parents)
Object Relations
The use of play as a procedure for conducting therapy with children
Play Therapy
A turning point in a developmental period when some interpersonal issue is being dealt with and growth potential and vulnerability are both high
Psychosocial Crisis (or Conflict)
Kohut’s theory that relationships create the structure of the self
Self Psychology
The mental representation of another person who functions to satisfy your needs
Self Object
The process of acquiring a distinct identity; separating from fusion with the mother
Separation - Individuation
A procedure used to assess the attachment pattern of the infant to the mother
Strange Situation
A period in which an infant experiences fusion with the mother
Symbiosis
The viewing of other people through self object representations originally developed parents
transference
A therapeutic approach in which conditioning processes are used to change behavior
Behavior Modification or Behavior Therapy
An assessment made by observing a person’s overt behavior
Behavioral Assessment
The pairing of a neutral stimulus with an unconditioned stimulus
Classical Conditioning
A neutral stimulus that’s paired with a US to become conditioned
Conditioned or Conditional Stimulus (CS)
Programs in which reinforcement is increased for desired behaviors and withheld after undesired behaviors
Contingency Management
A schedule in which reinforcement follows each instance of the behavior
Continuous Reinforcement
A model that displays fear but ultimately handles it
Coping Model
The linking of an emotion to a stimulus that differs from the emotion the stimulus now causes
Counterconditioning
Responding in a different manner to different stimuli
Discrimination
A cue that controls the occurrence of behavior
Discriminative Stimulus
Confidence of being able to do something successfully
Efficacy Expectancy
Classical conditioning in which the CR is an emotional reaction
Emotional Conditioning
Treatments in which people stay focused on the distressing topic until well after their anxiety dissipates
Exposure Treatments
In classical conditioning, the reduction of a CR by repeating the CS without the US; in instrumental conditioning, the reduction of a behavioral tendency by removing reinforcement
Extinction
Responding in a similar manner to somewhat different stimuli
Generalization
The ordering of a person’s potential responses by their likelihood
Habitat Heiarchy
An event in which a former CS now acts as a US in a new instance of conditioning
Higher Order Conditioning
Conditioning in which a behavior becomes more likely because its followed by a desirable event or less likely because it’s followed by an undesirable event
Instrumental or Operant Conditioning
A model that displays no fear
Mastery Model
The removal of an aversive stimulus
Negative Reinforcement
Acquiring the ability to do a new behavior by watching someone else do it
Observational Learning
See instrumental conditioning
Operant Conditioning
A judgement about how likely a specific behavior is to obtain a specific goal
Outcome Expectancy
A schedule in which the behavior is reinforced less often than every time it occurs
Partial Reinforcement
The fact that a behavior acquired through partial reinforcement is resistant to extinction
Partial Reinforcement Effect
Participant Modeling
The act of practicing a behavior that’s hard for you while using the therapist as a model
An inappropriately intense fear of some specific class of stimuli
Phobia
The measuring of physiological aspects of emotional reactions
Physiological Assessment
A reinforcement involving the addition of a desired stimulus
Positive Reinforcement
An undesired event that makes the behavior that came before it less likely to occur again
Punisher
An event in which stimulus produces an automatic response
Reflex
An event that makes the behavior that came before it more likely to occur
Reinforcer
The regulation and sometimes restraint of one’s own activities
Self Control
See efficacy expectancy
Self Efficacy
The approval you give yourself for your own behavior
Self Reinforcement
The absence of insufficiency of a needed behavior or skill
Skill deficit
Praise, liking, acceptance, or approval received from someone else
Social Reinforcer
Models in print, movies, TV and so on
Symbolic Models
A therapeutic procedure intended to extinguish fear
Systematic Desensization
A punishment in which a child is temporarily removed from an enjoyable activity
Time Out
A reflexive response to an unconditioned stimulus
Unconditioned or Unconditional Response (UR)
A stimulus that causes a reflexive (unconditioned) response
Unconditioned or Unconditional Stimulus (US)
Conditioning in which the unconditioned response occurs via empathy
Vicarious Classical Conditioning
The tendency to feel someone else’s feelings along with him or her; also called empathy
Vicarious Emotional Arpusal
An event in which a reinforcement experienced by someone else has a reinforcing effect on your own behavior
Vicarious Reinforcement
Yourself as you presently view it
Actual Self
The tendency to grow in ways that maintain or enhance the organism
Actualization
The procedure in which a therapist restates a client’s expressed feelings
Clarification of Feelings
A type of therapy that removes conditions of worth and has clients examine their feelings and take personal responsibility for their improvement
Client Centered or Person Centered Therapy
Affection that’s given only under certain conditions
Conditional Positive Regard
Self acceptance that’s given only under certain conditions
Conditional Self Regard
Contingencies placed on positive regard
Conditions of Worth
An integration within the self and a coherence between your self and your experiences
Congruence
The grouping and counting of various categories of statements in an interview
Content Analysis
Self acceptance that’s based on performance in some domain of life
Contingent Self Worth
“Being in the world” the totality of your autonomous personal existence
Daesin
Motives reflecting a lack within the person that needs to be filled
Deficiency Based Motives
A sense of guilt over failing to fulfill all of your possibilities
Existential Guilt
The view that people are responsible for investing their lives with meaning
Existential Psychology
The experience of being immersed completely in an activity
Flow
A person who’s open to life’s experiences and who is self actualizing
Fully Functioning Person
Motives reflecting the desire to extend and elaborate yourself
Growth Based Motives
A branch of psychology emphasizing the universal capacity for personal growth
Humanistic Psychology
Your perception of how you’d like to be
Ideal Self
The internal signal that indicates whether self actualization is occurring
Organismic Valuing Process
A subjective experience of intense self actualization
Peak Experinece
See client centered therapy
Person Centered Therapy
A view that emphasizes the importance of your own personal experiences
Phenomenological
Acceptance and affection
Positive Regard
An assessment technique in which you sort descriptors according to how much they apply to you
Q Sort
A motive to regain or reassert a freedom that’s been threatened
Reactance
A procedure in which a therapist rephrases the ideas expressed by a client
Restatement of Content
A process of growing in ways that maintain or enhance the self
Self Actualization
Pursuing goals that are consistent with your core values
Self Concordance
Deciding for yourself what to do
self Determination
Creating situations that make it hard to succeed, thus enabling avoidance of self blame for failure
Self Handicapping
Having a negative perception of the self because of feeling prejudged
Stereotype Threat
People whose actualization goes beyond the self to become more universal
Transcendent Self Actualizers
Acceptance and affection with “no strings attached”
Unconditional Positive Regard
The process of making a judgement about the cause or causes of an event
Attribution
Self related internal dialogue that often interferes with behavior
Automatic Thoughts
The pattern of situation behavior links the person has established over time and experiences in some specific domain
Behavioral Signature
Procedures used to assess cognitive processes, mental structures, and content of consciousness
Cognitive Assessment
The process of taking a different and more positive view of your experience
Cognitive Restructuring or Reframing
Procedures aimed at reducing cognitive distortions and the distress that results from them
Cognitive Therapies
Negative patterns of thinking about the self, the world, and the future
Cognitive Triad
An approach to understanding cognition based on the metaphor of interconnected neurons
Connectionism
Something assumed to be true until you learn otherwise
Default
Models assuming two different modes of cognition - one effortful, one automatic
Dual Process Models
Memory organized according to sequences of events
Episodic Memory
A specific example of a category member
Exemplar
A category defined by a set of attributes that aren’t absolutely necessary for membership
Fuzzy Set
Association between things in memory that aren’t directly accessible
Implicit Knowledge
Neurons that are active both when perceiving an action and when doing the action
Mirror Neurons
An area of memory that stores some element of information
Node
A personal mental representation used to interpret events
Personal Construct
An image of yourself in the future (expected, desired, feared, ect…)
Possible Self
Activating an element in memory by using the information contained in it, leaving it pretty activated
Priming
Knowledge about doing, about engaging in specific behaviors and mental manipulations
Procedural Knowledge
The representation of a category in terms of the best member of the category
Prototype
An organization of knowledge in memory
Schema
A memory structure used to represent a highly stereotypes catgory of events
Script
The degree to which your self schema is differentiated and compartmentalized
Self Complexity
The schematic representation of the self
Self Schema
Memory organized according to meaning
Semantic Memory
Cognitive processes that focus on socially meaningful stimuli
Social Cognition
Occurring too fast to be consciously recognized
Subliminal
The way you think of or label whatever action you are performing
Action Identification
A personal evaluation of the likely outcome of an action and the desirability of that outcome
Attitude
A mechanism that compares two values to each other
Comparator
A careful mindset used while deciding whether to take an action
Deliberative Mindset
To cease and put aside self regulation with regard to some goal
Disengage
An organization of feedback loops, in which subordinate loops act by providing reference values to subordinate loops
Feeback Heiarchy
The intention to attain some particular outcome
Goal Intention
Regulation around a constant, steady state
Homeostasis
A positively biased mindset that’s used while implementing an intention to act
Implemental Mindset
The intention to take specific actions in specific contexts
Implementation Intention
The process of creating a plan to attain an overall goal (end) by breaking it into successfully more concrete goals (mean)
Means End Analysis
A self regulating system that maintains conformity to some comparison value
Negative Feedback Loop
A broad, abstract action quality that could be displayed in any of several programs
Principle
A guideline for the actions that take place in some category of events (as a script)
Program
Your impression of how relevant others value an action and your interest in pleasing them
Subjective Norm
Stimuli presented too quickly to be consciously recognized
Subliminal Stimuli
A very abstract guide for behavior, such as an ideal sense of self
System Concept
Screening out a threatening stimulus before it enters awareness
Perceptual Defense
The idea that some conditioning’s easy, because the animal is biologically prepared for it to happen
Preparedness
